a fiend outstretched beneath the tree
by Madam Fiction
Summary: "If we both manage to stay alive, I'm sure we'll meet again..." From overnight, a tree grew from the depths of the unknown. When Dante ventured into its insides in a race to the top, a forgotten memory stood in his way, and with it, the answers that shrouded the Qliphoth's mystery. alt. title: Devil May Cry V: Featuring Demi-fiend from the Shin Megami Tensei Series


**_A/N: Reposting from Ao3_**

_I did some small alterations to SMT:N in regards of the True Demon Ending (which is the setting I'm using for this story in regards to Demi-fiend). This fic takes place in DMC5 at the start of Mission16 (and references the ending of Mission13)._

* * *

He feels it when they drop down the tunnel of the upper echelon. A sense of déjà vu that settles down on his body with a violent chill.

He gives the place a wary check, and then something makes itself present. Dante's surroundings flash for a second; change to a narrowed yellow stone corridor where the shadow of a memory stands at the other end.

His heart skips a beat, and he whips Ebony out of its holster in a violent movement.

Upon hearing Nero and V get on their guard, Dante's vision clears to his extended arm aiming at an empty tunnel where the chamber's far-end-entrance glows a warm orange.

"What is it?" Nero asks alarmed, his left hand ready on Red Queen's handle.

He doesn't have time to answer him because the floor beneath them collapses.

The last thing that Dante sees from the tunnel, as he falls down, is a dark silhouette with glowing red patterns, and a pair of eerie red eyes that callously stare down at him.

* * *

He leaves the hazy mirage of red eyes back in the tunnel; hallucinations won't help him fight his way to the top and win against Nero and V in this mad race to get to Vergil first.

He's the only one that has the premium ticket to kick his brother's ass. _Thank you very much._

After landing, he gives himself a moment to scan the chamber and take in his surroundings.

Red curling walls, a lilac rock hard floor that sprouts vein patterns up to the ceiling and down to the next tunnel; yellow crevices that adorn the far walls and serve as tunnels to this specific level.

Man, _what a weird place this is._

"No hard feelings guys," he boasts with haughtiness at both Nero and V, wherever they are, "but this is _my_ gig!"

_"Is it now?" _

He stops cold in his tracks, and then glances back at the other side of the hole that divides the room.

When he lays his eyes on him, Dante feels old.

Juvenile and skinny, donning nothing but a pair of knee-length pants and running shoes; black tattoos decorating his body in weird patterns, hair a messy bad-cut-fringe and a pointy black horn at the nape of his neck.

His eyes dark and intense, telling you everything _yet nothing at all_.

How long has it been_, ten years_? Time sure as hell didn't do a number for the brat as it did for him.

Was it really him, or was this the tree messing up with him by bringing back a well-hidden phantom?

Dante's musings are cut up by those eyes, the intense stare sending a shiver down his spine; for a brief second, he's 30 again, facing one of his most apt opponents to date.

"Hey, long time no see, brat," he says casually, cautious of any upcoming movement.

"_Dante..._" answers the boy with a deadly cold stare, his voice multiplied by a thousand in a weird mingling of sounds and tones that are supposed to be words, "_you look old._"

"And _you_ look the same as the last time I saw you," he answers back with a grin as he rests his thumbs in the pockets of his pants, "sans the coloring that is. Don't get me wrong, you're still rocking the punk-rock vibe that you've got going on there, but you look far edgier than I remember."

"_I'm glad to know you're still an asshole,_" answers the boy back with an annoyed expression.

Dante regards the kid with a wary eye and quickly peeps down the hole that separates the room, spying the faint glow of the next chamber down below.

"Well... as much as I'd like to stay and chat, I'm in a rush and you're kinda in my way. So let's cut this short, what are you doing here, kid? I thought you finished your business back in the Labyrinth and went your merry way home," as he says this the kid's posture goes rigid.

"Did you find the old man?"

That, apparently, _is the wrong thing to ask_.

The boy's jaw clenches and his expression turns sour.

"_Lucifer,_" he spits out the name as if it were poison, his face morphing into a nasty scowl, "_funny you bring him up, coward left me to rot in the unknown after I decimated God._"

Warning bells begin to ring in Dante's head when something heavy and cold settles in the air; he steals another quick glimpse at the bottom of the hole, and then at the kid at the other side of it.

Once the boy comes back from glaring at his far off memory, his eyes sharpen when he sees where Dante's looking at; he too glances down, and then his expression changes immediately to one of astonishment as he realizes something. When he reconnects looks with Dante, his black eyes are now cold.

"_He's he_re,_ isn't he?_" he asks flatly, his stare now apprehensive. "_He hired you again, didn't he... like last time._"

"Now, listen here ki—"

"_**Shut up!**_" he shouts with rage, and then, the room lights up completely in red, as do too the lining of his tattoos and eyes.

Dante hears a barrier beginning to take shape on the hole below, but his eyes can't look away from the kid's pupiless red ones. What makes him break eye contact is the kid's shadow spreading like spilled ink and beginning to take shape behind him.

"_You're standing in __**my**__ way, bastard, and I don't intend to waste any more of my time with you knowing that he's here!_"

The shadow settles behind him into the shape of a humongous caped warrior; the kid readies his posture, and so does Dante when the giant flashes a bright blue and a force field engulfs the boy and spreads lightning through his body.

"_I'll give you a minute to decide, old man,_" he says as the giant rises its hammer to the heavens, lightning beginning to crack on its head.

**"****_How would you rather end up looking, like cinder or garbage?_****"**

The kid begins to run at him at high speed when the giant's hammer hits the ground. Thunderbolts rain throughout the room, and the impact of the electrical shock leaves him stunned for a moment, but he doesn't care, because he's stuck mid-laugh at the boy's new rendition of an old quip.

_Cheeky brat._

By the time he recovers, the kid is already punching him in the gut with a bright red fist, the power behind the blow is so compelling that it winds him out, the burn is like that of a fiery heat wave that expands through him in a heartbeat, singes his flesh and rockets him back with a heavy explosion.

He hits the bright red pillar behind him, leaving a huge black cracking dent; warm vapor steams out from his healing burnt flesh, and he spits a gush of blood as he smiles manically in excitement, "Going all-out from the get-go huh?"

"_The faster I'm done with you, the better,_" says the boy as Dante looks up just in time to see him take a deep breath.

Dante hastens out of the way, mid-trigger, before the cold gust of icy wind left him frozen like an icicle and wastes no time in whipping Ebony and Ivory out of their holsters and firing a rain of bullets toward the kid.

The boy dodges most of his shots, the few ones that get him make the boy cry out in pain; the giant jumps in defense of his master and takes the remaining bullets that Dante's guns fire. The boy then leaps from the demon's head with a white energy spear crackling in his right hand, ready to be thrown.

Dante summons his namesake Devil Sword, and swings it upwards with a hard thrust the moment the lance darts down; upon impact, red energy spreads from dark smoke, and Dante leaps away from the crimson fumes, only to receive a punch to the face and clash his blade with the kid's purple energy one.

"You've certainly got faster," says Dante as their blades clash again, sparks flying from each swing and slice. "But you're not strong enough to beat me!"

His sword overpowers the boy's energy beam and shatters it the moment he leans and slices a diagonal cut over the boy's torso. But no blood spills from the slash and the kid lunges at him and blows a guff of fog in his face, Dante coughs after inhaling some and loses the brat from his sight.

The kid charges again from Dante's 9 o'clock with a cry, jumping in mid-run and spinning an air kick straight at him. Purple beams shot out from the sole of his shoe, and Dante counters them in time by holding his sword in a defensive stance intercepting the kick and counterattacking the remaining beams with a swords formation of his own.

"_Are you sure about that?_" asks cheekily the boy with a mocking smirk.

"You little shit..." coughs Dante as his demonic blades cut the purple in the air.

In the middle of the clash of flying energy blades, the kid soon finds his way at him yet again, his hands burning a bright orange with long sharp red nails. The kid begins to slash at him, and Dante quickly dodges back his way off from those claws.

He waits for the perfect opening to ram his sword in a power-fueled stinger strike straight at the boy's chest.

"_Tetrakarn!_"

But when his blade connects, the demonic blow is reflected by a sturdy barrier that sends both Dante and the kid flying back. The impact of it leaving an aftershock in Dante's arm.

The room quivers, and the intense red lighting dims its glow.

Dante grabs his sword with his left hand and readies his stance as he begins to charge his next blow.

"_Thor, go!_" cries the kid as he slouches down. His body starts turning a reddish hue, and a bright yellow light begins to manifests on his back.

The giant dashes at him and Dante unleashes a raid of devil-beams in a series of cuts towards the speeding demon. The giant stalls in mid-dash when the beams hit home, and Dante wastes no time.

Up, Down, _Cross-Slash_**_—right hand now functioning—_**Change, Left, Right, _Stinger Raid, _Rise up—**_Helm Breaker!_**

Thor falls, the room quakes and dims to almost black, and in mid-air, Dante gets hit by a stinging raid of golden lances that pierce through him, set his nerves on fire, and send him flying, yet again, across the room.

His sword vanishes, and he rolls hard on the ground while painful shocks run through his body, binding him until he cannot move or feel anything at all.

_What the hell?_

"_Thor, use Guillotine,_" commands the boy from across the room, remnants of smoke leaving form his mouth, his eyes and tattoos turning red again.

The giant stands up at the command of his master and rises its hammer to the skies.

But before the giant's weapon hits the ground, the room shines a blinding red, and then dims in a flash, regaining the coloring that it had before the fight started.

Dante sets his eye on the kid's confused expression from his face-down position on the ground.

Their gazes move when they hear the giant tremble in his stance, falling down in one knee with a harsh sound. The summon quivers violently before their eyes until it dissolves into dark sand.

"_What,_" asks the kid baffled with wide eyes.

It is but a second, a fragment of time that happens slowly before Dante's eye, the chamber pulses one last time, sucking up the remnants of red that lined the floor and walls, and the kid goes down hard against the ground with a pained howl.

Dante feels something rupture within him, and the numbness that held his body still fades away.

The sound of cracking wood echoes among the silence, and with it, the clean and singular gasp of pain from the young man across the room.

When Dante gets up, he immediately makes his way to the fallen boy.

The kid looks up when he hears his steps, and Dante now looks down at a stranger.

His eyes are gray, the black tattoos and horn are gone, replaced by crack marks that expand across his body; the teenage boy that lays on the floor is looking back at Dante in confusion and fear.

His body shivers, and then it cracks again; Dante kneels and holds the trembling boy in his arms, making him face up at him.

There's a hole where his heart should be, and a dim red dot lays in the middle of the crevice, beating faintly, and sucking the remnants of color from the boy's skin.

The kid's head moves to look down, but Dante stops him by gently tugging it back.

"Hey, hey, _look at me,_"

The boy's eyes make contact with his own, and his pupil expands until Dante stares back at a terrified void.

「ダンテさん,」 says the kid weakly with a clean and desperate voice,「僕に何が起こっているのか?」 Dante only catches his name in that question.

The red dot pulses, and sends a wave of color across the crack marks that line the boy's body until it dies.

"_Ki–_" he doesn't finish.

The boy's eyes spill down black tears, and the expression in his face dies together with a gasp of surprise, his body quivers in a gentle shiver one last time until it turns completely black and dissolves slowly in Dante's arms like sand.

The barrier below him breaks, and the room withers and loses its color until its grey and dead.


End file.
